The Battle of Algiers

The Battle of Algiers (Italian: La battaglia di Algeri) is a 1966 war film based on occurrences during the Algerian War (1954–62) against French colonial rule in North Africa, the most prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. The film has been critically celebrated and often taken, by insurgent groups and states alike, as an important commentary on urban guerilla warfare. It occupies the 120th place on Empire Magazine's list of the 500 greatest movies of all time

Subject

The Battle of Algiers reconstructs events that occurred in the capital city of French Algeriabetween November 1954 and December 1960, during the Algerian War of Independence. The narrative begins with the organization of revolutionary cells in the Casbah. Then civil war between native Algerians and European settlers (pied-noirs) in which the sides exchange acts of increasing violence, leading to the introduction of French army paratroopers to hunt theNational Liberation Front (FLN). The paratroopers are depicted as winning the battle by neutralizing the whole of the FLN leadership either through assassination or through capture. However, the film ends with a coda depicting demonstrations and rioting for independence by native Algerians, suggesting that in France having won the Battle of Algiers, she has lost the Algerian War.

The tactics of the FLN guerrilla insurgency and the French counter insurgency, and the uglier incidents of the war, are shown. Colonizer and colonized commit atrocities against civilians. The FLN commandeer the Casbah via summary execution of native Algerian criminals and other (considered) traitors, and applied terrorism to harass the civilian French colonials. The French colonialists resort to lynch mobs and indiscriminate, racist violence against the natives to hand. Paratroops routinely torture, intimidate, and murder in combating the FLN insurgents. Pontecorvo and Solinas have several protagonists, based on historical war figures. The story begins and ends from the perspective of Ali la Pointe (Brahim Hagiag), a petty criminal who is politically radicalized while in prison, and is then recruited to the FLN, by the (fictional) military commander El-hadi Jafar (Saadi Yacef, playing a character based on himself^[2]).

Lieutenant-Colonel Mathieu, the paratroop commander, is the principal French character. Other characters are the boy Petit Omar, a street urchin who is an FLN messenger; Larbi Ben M'hidi, a top FLN leader, is the film’s political rationale for the insurgency; Djamila, Zohra, andHassiba, three FLN women urban guerrillas who affect a revenge-attack. Moreover, The Battle of Algiers features thousands of Algerian extras; director Pontecorvo’s intended effect was the “Casbah-as-chorus”, communicating with chanting, wailing, and physical effect.

[edit]Production and style

[edit]Screenplay

The Battle of Algiers was inspired by Souvenirs de la Bataille d'Alger, by Saadi Yacef, the campaign account of an FLN military commander.^[3] The book, written by Yacef, while a prisoner of the French, was FLN morale-boosting propaganda for militants. After independence, Yacef was released and became part of the new government. The Algerian government backed a film of Yacef’s memoir; exiled FLN man Salash Baazi approached the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas with the project.

Solinas’s first draft screenplay, titled Parà, is the story told from the perspective of a disenchanted French paratrooper. The filmmakers initially developed their project with Paul Newman in mind. Baazi rejected that idea, because it relegates Algerian suffering to the backdrop. Moreover, Yacef wrote his own screenplay, which the Italians producers rejected as too-biased towards the Algerians. Although sympathetic to Algerian nationalism, the Italian businessmen insisted on dealing with events from a neutral perspective. The final screenplay of Battle of Algiers has an Algerian protagonist, and depicts the cruelty and suffering of French and Algerians.^[4] Apocryphally, Solinas began the script with jotted-down “flashes of ideas” on a blackboard, which became scenes, thus, the episodic feel.^{[citation needed]}

Despite its basis in true events, The Battle of Algiers uses composite characters, and changes the names of certain persons, e.g. “Colonel Mathieu” is a composite of several French counterinsurgency officers, especially Jacques Massu.^[5] Saadi Yacef has stated that Mathieu was actually more based on Marcel Bigeard, although the character is also reminiscent of Roger Trinquier.^[6] Accused of portraying him too elegant and noble, screenplay writer Solinas denied it is intentional; the Colonel is “elegant and cultured, because Western civilization is neither inelegant nor uncultured”.^[7] Actor Jean Martin later explained the character had been conceived from the start as a decent man doing his job, and that he himself had done his best to make him as sympathetic as possible.^[8]

[edit]Visual style

For Battle of Algiers, Pontecorvo and cinematographer Marcello Gatti filmed in black and white and experimented with various techniques to give the film the look of newsreel and documentary film. The effect was convincing enough that American releases carried a disclaimer that "not one foot" of newsreel was used.^[9]

[edit]Cast

Pontecorvo chose to cast from non-professional Algerians he met, picking them mainly on appearance and emotional effect (as a consequence, many of their lines were dubbed).^[10] The sole professional actor in the film was Jean Martin who played Col. Mathieu; Martin was a French actor who had worked primarily in theatre. Pontecorvo wanted a professional actor, but one whom audiences wouldn't be too familiar with, which could have interfered with the film's intended realism. Ironically, Martin had been fired several years earlier from theThéâtre National Populaire for signing the manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian War. Martin had also served in a paratroop regiment during the Indochina War as well as the French Resistance, thus giving his character an autobiographical element. The working relationship between Martin and Pontecorvo was not always easy, as the director, unsure that Martin's professional acting style wouldn't contrast too much with that of the non-professionals, kept arguing with his acting choices.^[8]

[edit]Sound and music

Sound — both music and effects — performs important functions in the film. Pontecorvo stated in several interviews that he spent much of his time during editing thinking of leitmotifs for the score.^{[citation needed]} These motifs were eventually incorporated into the orchestral score byEnnio Morricone to heighten the emotional impact — and to evoke parallels between events: scenes of French and Algerians civilians being slaughtered are both underscored by the same deeply elegiac music. Indigenous Algerian drumming, rather than dialogue, is heard during a scene in which female FLN militants prepare for a bombing. In addition, Pontecorvo used the sounds of gunfire, helicopters and truck engines to symbolize the French approach to the battle, while bomb blasts, ululation, wailing and chanting symbolize the Algerian approach.

[edit]Post-release history

[edit]Critical acclaim

Critics have commended the Battle of Algiers for its technical merits and relatively even-handed portrayal of both sides.^{[citation needed]}Pontecorvo resisted any temptation to romanticise the protagonists. The atrocities committed by the FLN and the French are both portrayed. The film does not demonise anyone and the main French character, Col Mathieu, comes over in a notably sympathetic way as a charismatic and correct soldier. The film's essential fair-mindedness is perhaps its most striking and skillful feature. It won the Venice Film Festival Grand Prize and was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Screenplay (Gillo Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas), Best Director (Gillo Pontecorvo) and Best Foreign Language Film. Other awards include The City of Venice Cinema Prize (1966); the International Critics Award (1966); the City of Imola Prize (1966); the Italian Silver Ribbon Prize (director, photography, producer); Ajace Prize of the Cinema d'Essai (1967); the Italian Golden Asphodel (1966); Diosa de Plata at the Acapulco Film Festival (1966); the Golden Grolla (1966); the Riccione Prize (1966); voted "Best Film of 1967" by Cuban critics in a poll sponsored by Cuban magazine Cine, and the United Churches of America Prize for 1967.

[edit]Political controversies in the 1960s

The film produced considerable political controversy in France and was banned there for five years.^[11] Scenes of torture were cut from the original American and British releases as they were seen as incendiary toward the French.^{[citation needed]} The sympathetic treatment of the FLN in The Battle of Algiers often dismayed former French colonists of Algiers (the pieds-noirs) and French army troops. The film was condemned by Gen. Paul Aussaresses (a commander of the French counterinsurgency, who wrote The Battle of the Casbah, challenging the film's portrayal of events) and Jean-Marie Le Pen, far-right politician in France and former paratrooper in Algeria.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]The Battle of Algiers and guerilla movements

The release of The Battle of Algiers coincided with the decolonization period and national liberation wars, as well as a rising tide of left-wing radicalism in Western nations in which a large minority showed interest in armed struggle. Beginning in the late 1960s, The Battle of Algiersgained a reputation for inspiring political violence; in particular the tactics of urban guerrilla warfare and terrorism in the film were supposedly copied by the Black Panthers, Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front.^[12] The Battle of Algiers was apparently also Andreas Baader's favourite movie.^[13]

[edit]Screenings worldwide

[edit]1960s screening in Argentina

Antonio Caggiano, archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1959 to 1975, inaugurated with President Arturo Frondizi (Radical Civic Union, UCR) the first course on counter-revolutionary warfare in the Higher Military College (Frondizi was eventually overthrown for being "tolerant of Communism"). By 1963, cadets at the (then infamously well-known) Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) started receiving counter-insurgency classes. In one of their courses, they were shown the film The Battle of Algiers. Caggiano, the military chaplain at the time, introduced the film approvingly and added a religiously oriented commentary to it.^[14] Anibal Acosta, one of the ESMA cadet interviewed 35 years later by French journalist Marie-Monique Robin described the session:

They showed us that film to prepare us for a kind of war very different from the regular war we had entered the Navy School for. They were preparing us for police missions against the civilian population, who became our new enemy.^[14]

[edit]Israeli screening during the First Intifada

The film was shown for several months at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque in 1988, shortly after the outbreak of the First Intifada and aroused considerable interest and public attention. In general, Left-wing commentators used the film to bolster their argument that attempts to subdue the Palestinians by brute force were futile and that Israel had to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while right-wingers asserted that Israel's situation vis-a-vis these territories, forming a territorial continuity with pre-1967 Israel, was not comparable to France and Algeria which are separated by the Mediterranean. The comparison of Israel's situation with the Algerian War continued to crop up in the Israeli political debate also after the film ceased to be shown, and remains a recurrent topic up to the present.

[edit]2003 Pentagon screening

Further information: Comparison of Iraq War to the Algerian War

In 2003, the film again made the news after the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict at The Pentagon offered a screening of the film on August 27, regarding it as a useful illustration of the problems faced in Iraq.^[15] A flyer for the screening read:

"How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film."^[16]

According to the Defense Department official (Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict) in charge of the screening, "Showing the film offers historical insight into the conduct of French operations in Algeria, and was intended to prompt informative discussion of the challenges faced by the French."^[16]

The 2003 screening lent new currency to the film, coming only months after U.S. President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 "Mission Accomplished" speech proclaiming the end of "major hostilities" in Iraq. Opponents of President Bush cited the Pentagon screening as proof of a growing concern within the Defense Department about the growth of an Iraqi insurgency belying his triumphalism.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]2003-2004 theatrical re-release

At the time of the 2003 Pentagon screening, legal and "pirate" VHS and DVD versions of the film were available in the United States and elsewhere, but the image quality was degraded. An Italian film restoration had been done in 1999. The restored print allowed Rialto Pictures to acquire the distribution rights for a December 1, 2003 theatrical re-release in the United Kingdom, a January 9, 2004 theatrical re-release in the United States and May 19, 2004 in France. The film was shown in the Espace Accattone rue Cujas in Paris from 15 November 2006 to 6 March 2007.^[17] This made the rounds of art house theaters and the festival circuit and was generally thought a "victory lap" for the film and its makers^{[citation needed]}. A small number of festival showings in the United Kingdom were accompanied by a live soundtrack performed byelectronica group Asian Dub Foundation. In the United States, the re-release was accompanied by a number of discussions of the film's influence by political and film commentators.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]2004 Criterion edition

On October 12, 2004, The Criterion Collection released the film, transferred from a restored print, in a 3-disc DVD set. The extras include former United States counter-terrorism advisors Richard A. Clarke and Michael A. Sheehan discussing The Battle of Algiers's depiction of terrorism and guerrilla warfare and directors Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Julian Schnabel, Steven Soderbergh and Oliver Stone discussing its influence on film. Another documentary includes interviews with FLN members Saadi Yacef and Zohra Drif.

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